Many consumer devices, including smart phones, televisions, navigation systems and game consoles, can now be controlled by voice in addition to more standard input mechanisms such as touch, buttons or separate controller devices. In some devices, the voice control is enabled through the pressing of a particular control (e.g. a voice control button on a television's remote control or a soft control on the screen of a smart phone) and in some devices the voice control can be triggered (in addition to, or instead of, through the pressing of a control) through the use of an activation phrase (e.g. “Hey Siri™”, “OK Google™”, “Hey Cortana™” or “computer”). In some examples the voice control can be used to control one or more applications running on the device (e.g. a search application) and in other examples, the voice control can be used more generally to control the operation of the device.
The embodiments described below are not limited to implementations which solve any or all of the disadvantages of known devices which can be voice controlled.